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I smiled.
Me: Together.
Archie: Pick a night for dinner, we’ll make it work.
Me: Love you.
Archie: Love you more.
I chuckled.
“Before you say anything,” Eddie called as though announcing his presence. “I let Charlie pick it out.”
When he walked into the kitchen, I laughed. Charlie was all dressed up in his panda onesie that Izzy had gotten him for his birthday. She liked dressing the babies up even more than she did the dogs.
“I see,” I told him. “Were you picking on Grandpa?”
Charlie just gave me the sunniest smile. “Pway?”
“We can go outside and play.” That onesie was going to be absolutely filthy. Oh well, it would wash.
The dogs were barking as soon as we stepped out onto the patio. There was a play area that was separate from the dogs. The stone patio was one step up from the grass. I carried our coffees and Eddie carried Charlie.
Once he set him down, Charlie toddled over to the little cabin the guys had built out here. It was practically a village, with reinforced everything and pads on edges. Not plastic. It was adorable and they kept adding to it.
“Thank you,” Eddie said when I handed him the coffee. He took a drink before he set the cup down and pulled out a handkerchief. There was a sticky spot on his lapel.
“You are so good with him,” I murmured.
“Dad used to say that having a stain on your suit was the sign of a family well loved—or an attitude that needed correcting. Strut the first and fix the second.”
Another wave of laughter escaped me. That sounded so much like Grandpa Ted. I missed him. He would have loved all these kids and would probably spoil them worse than any of their other grandfathers.
“Mama!” Charlie called and I found him climbing the small slide. He wasn’t allowed on the bigger one without one of his siblings.
“I can see you!”
He waved and then slid down with a whoop. Maxie and Murray had come over to watch us through the fence. They wagged their tails and waited patiently. Another lesson that we’d been teaching them. They had to be calmer around the littlest ones. Murray was much better at it than Maxie. She was constantly circling Josh and making him come back to one of us.
But one step at a time.
The dogs loved the kids and the kids loved them.
“What did you want to go over?” I asked as I took a seat. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was warm without being hot and the air was cool. Charlie was racing around chasing a butterfly now, but he kept checking on where we were.
“Oh, I thought we could discuss the quarterly distributions. They’re next month, but we’ve had some new requests.”
“The children’s foundation from Braxton Harbor. They’re opening three outreach centers in various parts of the city. Then in a year, they want to expand to a neighboring city.” I’d read the applications. They’d submitted detailed breakdowns on their plans for the facilities, for improvements, and what they wanted to do in the first, second, and third years with longer term goals outlined as well.
“That’s one of them. The other is from Blue Ivy Prep, they’re seeking donations for a couple of new buildings they want to add. Including a better musical facility. They always start by reaching out to alumni first, but in this case, I think they want you to link it to your work with Bound Hearts and Torched.”
“Did that just come in? There are a lot of wealthy donors on their alumni rolls.” I’d also never gone to Blue Ivy. KC might be willing to do her own donation, but that was totally up to her. She’d had a unique experience there. Then again, Archie had been one of their students. There’d been a brief discussion about sending the kids.
I did not want to send any of them to boarding school. We had plenty of private schools right here on Long Island. The guys agreed with me, and that was that. Eddie had only proposed it because several generations of his family had attended there, including Archie.
I had to resist the urge to lay my hand over my belly. No, our kids were going to be raised in a home with us. They would have family around them, not a bunch of strangers and distance from us. Just—no. My stomach sank and my eyes burned. It was hard enough to send them to school some days, much less send them to another state to live away.
“Hey,” Eddie said, concern in his voice grounding me in the present. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
